269 replies to this topic

[Cimarb]

Joseph Mallan, on 04 December 2013 - 05:32 AM, said:

Immediate pin point Alpha damage needs to go. A single 20 point hammer does not. Nor a 10 point hammer. 2-6 hammers hitting the same spot at once IS wrong. Take away the convergence from my 60 point Alpha strikes but leave my 60 point alpha alone!

You are missing the point. You can't have random convergence without destroying the fun of the game. Who wants to play a shooter where you point the weapon at something and hope it hits something nearby? If you want that, just don't use your zoom and stay at least 500 meters from the enemy.

If you make it damage over a 0.5-1 second duration, you are skilled enough to place that damage in one spot, so it would be the same end effect. In that clip that you show of the Hulk, which is also one of my favorite parts of that movie, he doesn't do a single hit - he quickly beats Loki back and forth over and over again. Smash all you want, just do it in a balanced way.

Edited by Cimarb, 04 December 2013 - 07:42 AM.

[SniperCon]

Joseph Mallan, on 04 December 2013 - 05:32 AM, said:

Immediate pin point Alpha damage needs to go. A single 20 point hammer does not. Nor a 10 point hammer. 2-6 hammers hitting the same spot at once IS wrong. Take away the convergence from my 60 point Alpha strikes but leave my 60 point alpha alone!

So if I fire 2 AC20s at once, which one misses where I am aiming? Or do they both miss?

[Cimarb]

SniperCon, on 04 December 2013 - 07:40 AM, said:

So if I fire 2 AC20s at once, which one misses where I am aiming? Or do they both miss?

In theory, they would both shoot wider than where you are targeting, similar to how it currently is when someone is face hugging your jäger. Some people think it would be good to have them random, like if you were jump jetting while firing, but that is even more screwy and definitely not fun.

[stjobe]

SniperCon, on 04 December 2013 - 07:40 AM, said:

So if I fire 2 AC20s at once, which one misses where I am aiming? Or do they both miss?

This is exactly the problem a convergence-based solution to the pin-point problem entails, and the burst-fire solution avoids.

There's another solution of course, but that seems even less popular than cone of fire: Forced chain-fire, a.k.a. global cooldown. No more alpha strikes, ever.

Of the four solutions,
1. Convergence
2. Cone of Fire
3. Global Cooldown
4. Burst-fire ballistics,

the last is the least disruptive, most true-to-lore, and frankly probably the easiest to implement.

Edited by stjobe, 04 December 2013 - 07:51 AM.

[SniperCon]

Cimarb, on 04 December 2013 - 07:44 AM, said:

In theory, they would both shoot wider than where you are targeting, similar to how it currently is when someone is face hugging your jäger. Some people think it would be good to have them random, like if you were jump jetting while firing, but that is even more screwy and definitely not fun.

What if I fire one at a time? Are they still missing?

[Cimarb]

SniperCon, on 04 December 2013 - 07:53 AM, said:

What if I fire one at a time? Are they still missing?

No. Like St Jobe listed, you are essentially doing the forced chain fire method, but voluntarily. The convergence solution makes the convergence of your weapons incrementally worse the more weapons you fire within the timeframe.

[Joseph Mallan]

SniperCon, on 04 December 2013 - 07:40 AM, said:

So if I fire 2 AC20s at once, which one misses where I am aiming? Or do they both miss?

Depends on where your crosshairs center is I would say. I have fired enough weapons to know that A round does not always go exactly where it is aimed. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to you. A growing Cone of fire as DocBach suggested months ago would work fine for me. The more weapons you fire at once the larger the cone. Many Mechs fluff talk about how their targeting computer has trouble calculating for multiple weapons.Thee is even a tank that has a Targeting computer so "advanced" it can "Target" LRMs.

[SniperCon]

Cimarb, on 04 December 2013 - 08:04 AM, said:

No. Like St Jobe listed, you are essentially doing the forced chain fire method, but voluntarily. The convergence solution makes the convergence of your weapons incrementally worse the more weapons you fire within the timeframe.

Wouldn't this make the AC 20 more powerful? It would suddenly be the ONLY way to deliver 20 damage at your crosshair.

Edited by SniperCon, 04 December 2013 - 08:18 AM.

[Cimarb]

SniperCon, on 04 December 2013 - 08:18 AM, said:

Wouldn't this make the AC 20 more powerful? It would suddenly be the ONLY way to deliver 20 damage at your crosshair.

In single use, yes, which is the whole problem I have with that method - it adds unnecessary complication without fixing the actual issue, just like ghost heat does. It is meant to stop dual AC20 jaegers by making their double shots not hit accurately, but it doesn't solve the root issue, which is the pinpoint (i.e. all damage in one spot at one time) issue that is exemplified by the AC20, but also found in the other autocannons and PPCs to a lesser extent.

[ToxinTractor]

What the fack am i reading. Ac20 op? No. Stupid people OP. Terribly so.

The Ac20 works great at its role. and thats to be the hammer in a close range fight. However folks are being really dumb with them. Yes the jager and certain other mechs can mount 2 of them. 2 Ac20s isnt that awesome though since you give up so much for that 14 tonsx2. Ammo for it- as much as i hate the low ammo my self (Hunchy driver- hard to make those rounds last all game) it does help sorta.. if your gonna use the AC20 it really makes you think "do i really need a weapon that will take 14 + 2/3 tons of ammo?"

I dont understand these accusations of "Ac-warrior online".. Pulse lasers are great, hell tried a orion with large pulses,ac and some srms and it was great! just chain fire If anything the medium ones i feel are more "Situation"

Gauss- while i find the charge up a bit strange its not bad.. yes its frail and blows up in your face.. but ****. It was sorta suppose to- and it again. makes you think if your gonna be able to keep the range/be alert to protect the weapon.

Lrms. Eh i dont see anythin bad with them.. hell i often use them to support my loadouts/round them out. Trick is to only start firing AFTER the fights start since thats when folks start to separate from there ECM mechs or the ppcs turn off the ecm mechs.

However Ghost heat i find is a really big double edged sword.. not sure if its good or not.

[akpavker]

Joseph Mallan, on 04 December 2013 - 08:06 AM, said:

Depends on where your crosshairs center is I would say. I have fired enough weapons to know that A round does not always go exactly where it is aimed. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to you. A growing Cone of fire as DocBach suggested months ago would work fine for me. The more weapons you fire at once the larger the cone. Many Mechs fluff talk about how their targeting computer has trouble calculating for multiple weapons.Thee is even a tank that has a Targeting computer so "advanced" it can "Target" LRMs.

cone of fire will KILL this game! sure as **** i wont be hanging around here if weapon damage becomes random!

[Galenit]

stjobe, on 04 December 2013 - 07:49 AM, said:

This is exactly the problem a convergence-based solution to the pin-point problem entails, and the burst-fire solution avoids.

I wrote down a solution for this a year ago, maybe you find it in the archieved forum?

It was about baseconvergence and time to take new convergence taking mechtree and weaponsweight into account for it.

Time to take convergence: 0.01 seconds per weaponton involved x distance difference/50 - mechtreeunlock

Example
2x ac20 at 370m: (2x 14 tons x 0.01) x (100m/50) = 0.56 seconds reduced by 15% from mechtree unlock = 0.48 seconds

But there is one question, should the weapons allways return on baseconvergence after some time without proper target at that range or should they stay at the last convergence and take this as base for the next adjustment?

And there are other problems i see:
1. to complicated for the casual players they want to lure in
2. not dumb enough for the masses they want to lure in
3. the implementation pgi will (or should i say can?) make from it

Edited by Galenit, 05 December 2013 - 02:51 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

akpavker, on 04 December 2013 - 08:05 PM, said:

cone of fire will KILL this game! sure as **** i wont be hanging around here if weapon damage becomes random!

So you always put every round through the same hole when you fire pistols and rifles? There is only One hole in your target no matter how many rounds you fire? Would you quit life if you didn't have pin point convergence when firing on a range?

Spare us the histrionics.

[Cimarb]

Joseph Mallan, on 05 December 2013 - 04:11 AM, said:

So you always put every round through the same hole when you fire pistols and rifles? There is only One hole in your target no matter how many rounds you fire? Would you quit life if you didn't have pin point convergence when firing on a range?

Spare us the histrionics.

I'm not about to agree that cone of fire will "kill this game" or any such silly statement, but I don't think convergence fixes the real issue, so it would not improve anything significantly. The issue is not being able to point accurately and hit something - that is called skill. The issue is being able to pull the trigger and have 20 points of damage in one spot at one time. Alpha-firing exacerbates the issue, yes, but it is not the root issue, so it's just a bandaid like ghost heat is.

For instance, four ERLLs (40 damage) are only a threat to the target if you are standing still. Torso twist or move and that damage is distributed around your mech, no matter how skilled the shooter is. Two AC20s (also 40 damage), though, will do all of their damage to one spot at one time regardless of how much you move or twist, though the shooters skill will determine where that damage is placed. Convergence will space that damage out, but ONLY if they are fired in an alpha - firing them one at a time will avoid the convergence (just like it avoids ghost heat), but the damage to a single spot will remain the same.

[Trauglodyte]

Torso convergence isn't really that big of a problem. You've got to assume that all weapons are locked on a set point. I dont' like that idea but, given the restrictions of the game engine and to limit what people have to deal with when it comes to aiming, that is how PGI has done it. It's fine and we all deal with it.

The problem is and always has been the issue with instant convergence of the arm weapon with the torso weapons. Once you get the elite skills finished, of which Convergence Speed is one of them, you also double the benefit from the arm speed. This essentially allows you to put all of your damage in the same spot because there isn't any delay in your arms swinging into the appropriate angle.

What needs to be done is the removal of the Convergence Speed efficiency (PGI already stated that they were going to replace this with something else) and the speed at which your arms move needs to be changed or the basic efficiency needs to be reduced. On top of that, they need to make it so that when your arms are moving at different spots that there is an indication of such. Your arm reticle is marked by a "o" on your HUD. If your arms are moving at angles versus the torso weapons, then it needs to be shown as such: o + o (poor visual but you get the point).

Cone of fire isn't something really needs to be added. I'm all about having slight reticle shake based on heat and movement speed but something like random locations being hit is pretty awful. Plus, this game, while being a simulation, is also a FPS which means that aiming skill needs to be represented without regard to TT game mechanics (added to keep people from dying in an instant) and novels (fluff added to make consistent characters look like mech gods - its called fiction for a reason).

[stjobe]

Trauglodyte, on 05 December 2013 - 01:53 PM, said:

What needs to be done is the removal of the Convergence Speed efficiency

Yes, but only because it doesn't actually do anything - it's just a 3,000 XP levelling tax at this point.

As I've said before, pin-point instant damage needs to go; it's not rocket science why ACs and PPCs dominate MWO currently, and why both missiles and energy weapons are considered "weak" - they spread their damage!

Here's what pin-point damage does to MWO: the weapons in MWO are at the same time both too weak compared to TT and too strong; individually they're too weak due to the doubled armour and IS, but get a few together and they're too strong - because they all hit in the same place.

As far as I can tell, there's four ways of reducing this pin-point problem:
1. Reimplement convergence - which does nothing for the "instant unavoidable damage" part, just the pin-point part.
2. Implement a cone of fire - which nobody seems to like. I don't like the spread of my MG either.
3. Implement a global cooldown - in effect force chain fire, removing alpha strikes completely.
4. Reimplement ACs as burst-fire weapons and the PPC as a beam weapon.

Of these the last is the most palatable, and the one that actually fixes the problem best. If ACs burst-fired, there would be the possibility of twisting to avoid getting all damage in one spot, just like with lasers. It would also reduce the amount of damage delivered instantly (since it's spread over the projectiles in the burst). It would level the playing field between all three groups of weapons; ballistics, energy, and missiles, and we could start seeing some real weapon balance. It would also raise the skill floor a tad, as it would be a little bit harder to place all your damage in one section of the target.

The PPC is by lore a beam weapon, so I have no idea what PGI were smoking when they implemented it as a faux-ballistic weapon.

That leaves us with the Gauss Rifle as the only single-projectile, instant-damage weapon - and that's how it is supposed to behave according to lore, so that's fine.

Burst-fire ballistics. It's what MWO needs.

Edited by stjobe, 05 December 2013 - 02:37 PM.

[Royalewithcheese]

Never change, MWO forums. Never change.

[Mystere]

Joseph Mallan, on 05 December 2013 - 04:11 AM, said:

So you always put every round through the same hole when you fire pistols and rifles? There is only One hole in your target no matter how many rounds you fire? Would you quit life if you didn't have pin point convergence when firing on a range?

Spare us the histrionics.

Does using a bow count?

[MustrumRidcully]

Cimarb, on 05 December 2013 - 01:26 PM, said:

I'm not about to agree that cone of fire will "kill this game" or any such silly statement, but I don't think convergence fixes the real issue, so it would not improve anything significantly. The issue is not being able to point accurately and hit something - that is called skill. The issue is being able to pull the trigger and have 20 points of damage in one spot at one time. Alpha-firing exacerbates the issue, yes, but it is not the root issue, so it's just a bandaid like ghost heat is.

For instance, four ERLLs (40 damage) are only a threat to the target if you are standing still. Torso twist or move and that damage is distributed around your mech, no matter how skilled the shooter is. Two AC20s (also 40 damage), though, will do all of their damage to one spot at one time regardless of how much you move or twist, though the shooters skill will determine where that damage is placed. Convergence will space that damage out, but ONLY if they are fired in an alpha - firing them one at a time will avoid the convergence (just like it avoids ghost heat), but the damage to a single spot will remain the same.

One thing to consider, however...

Convergence makes the problem worse, because it adds synergy to boating builds.

If you know pinpoint precision is an advantage, you can, with some analysis, probably figure out how much that is worth and adjust the weapon statistics accordingly (lowering damage, lowering rate of fire, increase heat, lower ammo/ton, whatever floats your boat.)
But you can do this only on a per weapon basis. The pinpoint precision of a converged AC/20 can be accounted for, but the pnipoint precision of 2 AC/20? What do you do for that? Make two AC/20 fire more slowly, consume more ammo, or produce more heat than one AC/20? That's obviously silly*. The table top could get away with this (look at what it costs you to run 1 AC/20 vs what it costs you to run 4 Medium Lasers - same damage output, but the MLs are considerably lighter, even if take into account the heat sinks and ammo required to run each weapon effectively) because there was no convergence - every weapon fired seperately with its own to-hit and hit-location roll.

So I think forced chain-fire could work as a balancing tool. It's just not popular (except with me). People like their giant instantenous firing alpha strikes.
If I can't have forced chain-fire for pinpoint weapons, then I have to agree, turning pinpoint weapons into non-pinpoint weapons and instead burst fire weapons and beam weapons would work.

I could also see this as an interesting opportunity to make more changes that might be received more positively.
The different SRMs and LRM variants share their ammo in MW:O. They don't normally in TT. If we change auto-cannons into burst fire weapons, we could als ensure that they have some compatible ammo.
For example, they could all use 1 damage projectiles, with each weapon firing their "number" in projectiles per burst. You'd still have the freedom to determine how long each weapons burst lasts (do all last 0.5 seconds? Do we say 0.1 seconds per projectile, so an AC/20 would fire a far longer burst than an AC/2=), and what cooldowns you use, so you're not limitnig yourself in balancing the weapons against each other. And there is more synergy between mixing different Auto-Cannons, you don't have to build boats (how many people do you see that build an AC/10 + AC/20 hybrid?)

Though I would have two different damage projectiles. I'd have AC/2 and AC/10 use compatible ammo, and AC/5 and AC/20 use compatible ammo. I'd have these pairs also use the same projectile speed. The result is that there is some synergy between using non-specialized builds - AC/5 and AC/2 being long range weapons and AC/10 and AC/20 being more short range weapons.



*(But not silly enough for PGI to try with ghost heat! And then go even further and misapply it to weapons that don't even deal pinpoint damage).

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 06 December 2013 - 02:39 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Quote

As I've said before, pin-point instant damage needs to go; it's not rocket science why ACs and PPCs dominate MWO currently, and why both missiles and energy weapons are considered "weak" - they spread their damage!

Before anyone brings up the LRM apocylpses as counter-example to "pinpoint precision is not a problem":
1) Even without pinpoint precision, you can get balance problems, that's a given.
2) LRMs and SRMs did in fact for a long time have relatively big splash damage radius. This basically created a similar effect as pinpoint damage does - a lot of damage went to the CT simply because it "splashed" there. The equivalent would be if firing your PPC at the left Torso (by accident or intentional) dealt 10 damage to the left torso and 5 damage to the CT. Yeah, that's not pinpoint damgae, but the damage sure as hell stacks up on that CT. (And this was a problem even before splash damage almsot literally exploded in our face and suddenly multiplied the damage by inordinate amounts due to changes to hit box meshes. The weapon stats and mechanics just worked out that the benefit wasn't always egrigious. A PPC that deals 4 damage per hit to the intended location and half of that to the adjoining with everything else the same as now might also not be considered OP... )

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 06 December 2013 - 02:45 AM.